Otzerot Hayyim (Treasure Houses of Life), Hayyim Vital, [North Africa: late 18th-early 19th centuries]

140 leaves (9 1/4 x 6 3/4 in.; 235 x 173 mm).

Yosef Avivi, “The Writings of Rabbi Hayyim Vital Discovered in Jerusalem and Their Redaction by Rabbi Jacob Zemah,” Ha-Ma‘yan 18,4 (1978): 61-77 (in Hebrew).

Otzerot Hayyim, on divine emanation, was edited by Jacob Zemah in 1643 based on a complete manuscript in Hayyim Vital’s hand that he had placed in a genizah in Jerusalem. Zemah emphasizes that, as opposed to other works then in circulation, particularly those edited by Benjamin ha-Levi and Elisha Guastalla, the present book organizes all of the various homilies on the topic in their proper order, as the author intended them. The present copy is written in a beautiful North African hand and includes, at the beginning and end of the text, illustrations of the Divine process of emanation.